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RESTIF, NICOLAS-EDMEE, (1734-1806) called de la Bretonne for his father's farm in
Burgundy, is one of the most prolific authors of French literature, with more than two hundred
books in all genres to his credit, many of which he printed himself and most of which are
unmemorable. He took his inspiration from life - his rural youth in the village of Sacy near
Auxerre, his later knowledge of Paris [where he was a printer], and his lifelong experiences as a
libertine. The best of his works melded his memories with his genius and resulted in the "personal
novel", a genre he helped inaugurate and which would rise to prominence in the nineteenth
century. (...)  disappointed and ruined by the Revolution, which he had looked to for reform, Restif
died in misery and poverty at age 72.
     Much of Restif's work is libertine and was long excluded from serious studies of literature
as cynical, vulgar, and tasteless. However, his genius in recounting his experiences cannot be
denied. His depiction of the country, the city, women, though often idealized and nostalgic,
contains a realism that comes only from intimate knowledge. He insisted that his novels were true.
He wrote about the lower classes and simple, uneducated peasants, whose habits and dialects he
knew and capalred on paper. (...) His love of the countryside and admiration for J.-J. Rousseau
(which earned him the dubious title, "Le Rousseau des ruisseaux-The Rousseau of the gutters")
fostered his dream of a virtuous and egalitarian republic.
     Restif de la Bretonne represents a curious amalgam of the idealist and the realist, the
moralist and the libertine, the philosopher and the lover. Gerard de Nerval hailed him as his
''spiritual tutor." His vast imagination, his gift of observation, and his energy ally him with the
likes of Balzac and Zola.

[Extract of an Article on Restif in <The Dictionary of Modern French Literature : From the Age of
Reason trough Realism> / Sandra W. Dolbow - Wesport, Connecticut : Greenwood Press, 1986 -
367p.]


WORKS

- <La Famille vertueuse> (<The Virtuous Family>, 1767)
-  <Le Pied de Fanchette> (<Fanchette's Foot>), 1769
- first success with <Le Paysan perverti> (<The Corrupted Peasant>), 1775
-  <La Vie de mon pere> (<My Father's Life>), 1779
-  <Les Contemporaines> (<Contemporary Women>), 1780 
-  <Sara ou La Derniere Aventure d'un homme de quarante-cinq ans> (<Sara, or The Last
Adventure of a Forty-Five Year Old Man>), 1783
-  <La Paysanne pervertie> (<The Perverted Peasant Girl>), 1784, which was combined with <Le
Paysan perverti> as <Le Paysan et la paysanne pervertis> (1787)
- <Mes Inscriptions> (<My Inscriptions>), written between 1780 and 1787 and discovered 1887
- <Les Francaises> (<Frenchwomen>), 1786
- <La Femme infidele> (<The Unfaithful Wife>), 1786
- <Les Parisiennes> (<Parisian Women>), 1787-1791
- <Ingenue Saxancour> (1789)
- <La Vie de Monsieur Nicolas> (<The Life of Mr. Nicholas>), 1794-1797, his autobiography, an
erotic testimony to his life and the Parisian underworld. 
-  <Les Nuits de Paris> (<Paris Nights>), 1788 
-  <Idees singulieres> (<Singular Ideas>), begun in 1769, comprises his ideas for regulating
prostitution (<Le Pornographe>) and reforming the theatre (<Le Mimographe>), women (<Le
Gymnographe>), men (<L'Andrographe>), laws (<Le Thesmographe>), language (<Le
Glossographe>), and education (<L'Edugraphe>).
- <L'Anti-Justine> (1798)

and seventeen plays that were never presented.  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* P.L. Jacob, <Bibliographie et Iconographie de tous les ouvrages de Retif de la Bretonne> - Paris,
1875

* Pierre Testud, "Etat present sur les etudes sur Retif de la Bretonne" <Dix-huitieme Siecle> VII,
1975

* Pierre Testud, <Retif de la Bretonne et la creation litteraire> - Paris : Droz, 1977

* <Bulletin de la Societe Retif de la Bretonne>, numero special de la revue <Europe>, 732, avril
1990

* <Oeuvres erotiques de Restif de la Bretonne> / [Introduction generale et bibliographie
1949-1984 par Daniel Baruch] - Paris : Fayard, 1985

See also

- D. Coward, ''Restif as a Reader of Books," <Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century>
205 (1982): 89-132
-  R. Veasy, "La Vie de mon pere: Biography, Autobiography, Ethnography?" <Studies on
Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century> 212 (1982): 213-224; 
- P. Wagstaff, ''Nicolas's Father: Restif and La Vie de mon pere," <Forum for
Modern Language Studies 16> (October 1980): 358-367.